Art Writer Robin Cembalest
has produced everything from investigative journalism to profiles, trend stories, hard news, reviews, and early listicles and blog posts. She’s published in the the Village Voice, New York Observer, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, El País, most of the major art magazines, design publications, and many other places.
Working at ARTnews, Robin covered the major cultural events and controversies of the 1990s and 2000s— government funding and the Mapplethorpe obscenity trial, the ecological art boom, the growth of the Guggenheim, censorship cases, multiculturalism, diversity, Native American art, the rise of social practice, and the transformation of the art museum, among other topics. She’s also written extensively on Spanish art and culture for publications in Spain and the U.S.
Following is a non-chronological sampling from Robin’s hundreds of publications.
The Curator Vanishes: Period Room as Crime Scene
A disappearance, a discovery, and a mystery at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, via Mark Dion
Havana’s Hidden Monuments
Cuba’s revolutionary Escuelas Nacionales de Arte are being threatened by the jungle
Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Destructing Chocolate Head
Delicious dish on chocolate artworks by Janine Antoni, Dieter Roth, and more
Tobias Schneebaum’s epic adventures
A film by Laurie G and David Shapiro spotlights the gay American Jewish anthropologist and artist who documented his travels in Papua New Guinea and Peru.
The Thing's the Plays: Public Theater's New Shakespeare Machine
Artist Ben Rubin remixes 37 works in a site-specific, L.E.D-lit, linguistic-supercollider sculpture (that’s also a chandelier).
The Mysteriously Tiny Drawings of an 18th-Century Artist, Born Without Hands or Feet
Using an implement he wielded with his stumps, Matthias Buchinger excelled in calligraphy, ornamentation, and micrography, the practice of making patterns with tiny letters. Ricky Jay’s book and a show at the Met explored the art and life of “The Little Man of Nuremberg.”
A Climate Change in the Art World?
The art community is digging out, drying off, counting its losses, helping its neighbors–and starting to prepare for the hurricanes of the future